The death toll from the nuclear crisis in Japan will take generations to ascertain.
But one thing we can say for sure today: the death watch is ticking for the nuclear industry around the world.
Japan is not one of them. It’s a heavily industrialized nation with few conventional sources of energy. One reactor at the centre of today’s crisis is 40 years old and was scheduled to be replaced this year by a more efficient reactor.
France relies on nuclear power for more than 75 per cent of its electricity and won’t abandon that investment.
Neither will Ontario. More than half their electricity comes from atomic power.
Ontario has some inherent advantages over Japan, the chief one being that it’s a stable geologic area with few earthquakes and ready access to fresh water that is needed to cool reactors. Ontario is also close to the most densely populated area of the world’s most voracious energy user. Its power lines are tied to the U.S. grid; the power flows both ways.
But for places that don’t have an established nuclear industry, don’t have access to large electricity importers, don’t have access to water to cool reactors, nuclear power generation is now a non-starter.
Chief among them, for Albertans today, is the Peace River. An Ontario company has been working for several years to build support for a reactor there. It has won backing in some quarters from officials who would welcome a new industry.
It has also encountered opposition from folks who don’t want a nuclear plant anywhere close to their back yards. Recent events in Japan have surely strengthened those arguments.
All it takes is one crisis per generation to keep nuclear power’s future receding over the horizon.
It’s been 32 years since the near disaster at Three Mile Island, Penn. That crisis started with human operator error, ended with no explosion, core meltdown or human casualties.
But no new nuclear power plant has been commissioned in the United States since then. One was started in Tennessee five years before Three Mile Island and it’s still not completed.
This week’s crisis has moved prospects for new American plants out at least another decade.
Nuclear power technology has advanced significantly since 1979. New reactors are safer and more efficient. Plants proposing thorium as a fuel also offer safety advantages over uranium-based reactors.
American scientists knew that generations ago, when they helped create the nuclear industry. But their goal was not to build safe electric power plants.
Their goal was to create a devastating bomb that would end all wars. It has not worked out that way.
War has changed. Now it can be fought by delusional, hate-filled young people who don’t serve in a traditional army, but are willing to die in a terrorist attack that they believe will give them eternal life.
A terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant, producing massive casualties over a huge geographic area, is surely their biggest dream and security planners’ worst nightmare.
For the good guys, the second-worst challenge is what to do with spent fuel from nuclear reactors. It can remain lethally radioactive for thousands of years. Nobody wants it buried in their back yard, no matter how safe and geologically stable the experts tell them it is. Nobody living near roads between power plants and supposedly safe burial grounds want nuclear waste travelling on their highways.
Now add global warming to the growing list of threats facing nuclear power plants.
France was an enthusiastic adopter of nuclear power to generate electricity. Its industry has been remarkably safe and productive. But France now faces challenges as rivers servicing inland power plants shrink as the Earth warms.
That’s a hurdle any Alberta nuclear power plant would also encounter.
The Peace River originates in mountainous northern British Columbia. Its waters flow east through Alberta, into the Northwest Territories and eventually into the Arctic Ocean. The Peace is dammed for hydro power production in British Columbia; its flow in northwestern Alberta is not massive.
Over time, that flow seems certain to diminish.
Canadian water expert David Schindler talks about how our rivers are changing. They now have massive flows in the spring from accelerated climate-driven snowmelt, followed by severely depleted downstream flows in late summer due to increased evaporation.
As the Earth warms and evaporation rates rise, the time may soon come when they slow to a trickle.
Water is scarce and essential for all life in Alberta. Going forward, we won’t have water to spare for nuclear power plants whose chief purpose would be extracting oil from the tarsands.
More than 60 per cent of power consumption in Alberta is now used by industry. That share will rise steeply as bitumen extraction becomes our dominant industry.
There are good ways and bad ways to power that process. A refinery close to the heavy-oil hub would be the best option.
Natural gas, which is cheap now and increasingly abundant owing to rising shale-gas extraction, would be an acceptable option. (Not that it doesn’t have its own environmental challenges.)
But nuclear power plants, with high capital costs and uncertain risks should have no place in our power mix.
Nuclear plants take billions of dollars and a decade to build. Investors never bear the full burden for their costs and risks, because insurance companies will not provide coverage for their full potential liabilities. When things go horribly wrong in a nuclear power plant, taxpayers are on the hook for the cleanup and reparations.
That’s not a burden any Albertan should ever have to carry.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired former managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.